yay, am back home... home sweet home, its actually like 4am Aussie time, so i'm amazed i can still stay awake... :P

firstly. am glad to have my keyboard back, beats having some stupid laptop keyboard... but my wireless mouse still isn't really working, sucks...

let's see, where do i start... okie, let's start with Sunday!

we split into 2 groups, Peiying, Bree and wp went with the hc pple to the Great Ocean Road thing... I wanted to see the scenery, but was relucatant to go cuz it was a nine hour bus ride in all... i'd just die... haha, so Nick, Claire and i arranged for our own trip, which took really interesting turns... ;)

in the morning, we went the Royal Botanical Gardens... such a far cry from ours man. If u see the pictures, you'll totally understand. spent 2 hours there, was really great... :) after that, walked to the nearby Rod Laver Areana and Vodafone Areana! That was like a great moment, except now i know that the Australian Open is the ugliest of the 3 slams. the grounds are just not as grand as the one in New York, as beautiful as the one in Paris or as historic as the one in London. it just seems plain? but still, was happy just going there.

went to town to look for details for the trip for the rest of the day. planned to go to yarra valley cuz it looked like it was very scenic, we planned to go by boat, ends up there is some waterfall obstructing the way, and the only is by coach, which required earlier bookings. so we decided to go to kilmore which looked very good too, and we just rushed into things, deciding to stay overnite there... :O went down to the V Line Station, which is a train and coach operator and bought coach tickets, it was so cheap, only $8.50. its damn cheap considering a ride on the tram, one way, costs $1.80 each time. The salesperson was so unhelpful... :rolleyes:

after that, we went to Bridge Road so nick and i could go to Jay Jay's... decided to go there cuz the stuff there are cheap and look pretty nice. cheap here is used here in a relative way, as in cheap compared to all the other clothes we see around in aus. here, a surf T-shirt would cost u at least $40aus... that is like $60 here in singapore? so at $25, it was cheap. had a really hard time deciding what to buy cuz i had a feeling i bought one of the shirts the other day. turns out i almost bought the same shirt again. phew... thank goodness i decided to but something else. but nick, haha, he bought the same shirt that i bought the other day. awww... more clothing thare the same as mine... so sad rite? ;)

rushed back to pack for our trip to kilmore after shopping... took a little too long to pack. the coach leaves at 630pm, and we elft at 6pm... so that left us with half an hour top get to the station. we took a tram to the city and had to switch. unfortunately, we took the 2nd tram in the wrong direction. thank goodness i wasn't feeling lazy that day and went to ask the driver if we were going the rite way. had 5 mins left to get to the coach. i flagged a cab at the opposite side of the road, amazingly, the cab came... i asked, "is it possible to get there in 5mins?" the driver was like, of course, its just a few streets away, we'd be there in 2. yeah, it took about 2mins, and $6 too. we stopped at the ticket station, but the stupid coach was miles away. took us some 7mins to walk there, and we really just got on. damn lucky... the coach was just about pulling away. man, its a once in the lifetime thing i hope... :P

so we left, the scenery looked nice and everything, and it was our first self arranged backpacking kinda trip. before that, i already rang up a few accomodations, and settled on one that was $70 for a nite called, Kilmore Country Motel. well, we were quite apprehensive after hearing the name, but we weren't rich. when we riched kilmore, we were just dumped on the road. we had no maps, nothing, and we were supposed to find this motel. and there wasn't like anyone walking round on the streets, pple just drive here and there!! whatever... so we just walked along, looking at the signs and found it after sometime. at first glance, its looked just like the motel we saw in Identity (a horror show)... and i was telling claire and she was freaked. haha... when we entered the rooms, we had such a huge shock!!! the rooms actually looked great... better than our hostel. there was a tv(!!), toaster, electric kettle, ermmm, frigde, nice blankets... ok, basically, it looked more like a hotel than a motel. we were delighted! :)

went to buy cheap pizza from Pinkie's for dinner. was really yummy, but really, there was so much food and we just couldn't finish it. god... just felt like pig after the whole meal... :P nick and i then tried to go sightseeing in the nite, but haha, bad idea, it was so dark and creepy, we just couldn't tell where we were going. and the map was almost blown away... can u imagine?! we'd just be stranded somewhere we dun even know... :S

yups, so we went back and showered and watched tv... they had really interesting shows on, so it was cool. then they kept having these newsflashes to tell us sadam was caught. somehow, that one they caught didn't look like the real one... hmmm, and one can only wonder where they could the DNA they tested from...

the 3 of us shared a room, but it was fine cuz claire had the single bed to herself while nick and i shared the queen sized bed. speaking of sleeping, am quite tired now, its almost 5am! ;) yup, shall blog abt the rest of the stuff another day... bye!